Chapter 2

Work and other
important stuff

Work and other important stuff

To make sure we as a team always perform at our best, we’ve made it our business to also make sure we’ve got our employees covered in every aspect needed. To make the working life a little bit easier, y’know?

Here are a few of things we like to highlight, to give you a comprehensive understanding of how things work on a daily basis, what perks you can expect and of course some handy links to admin stuff.

This is just basic hygiene. Making sure all the tech stuff is in place: computer, phone and all the passwords to relevant accounts. What needs to be in place:

Computer

Phone

Email address

Calendar

Google Drive

Access to 1Password

Access to Slack (our day to day communications tool)

Access to Check, Tripletex or ActiveCollab

Access to Float (project management tool)

Access to Monday (onboarding tool)

If you feel as if any of the above are missing, please contact a fellow Trickle employee or your closest manager and we’ll sort it out for you.
We have a carefully executed ecosystem in place, and we want you to be a part of it. The organizational onboarding process will inaugurate you into how Trickle as a company works, going through the different processes we work with and our overall philosophy. What needs to be done:

Intro meeting with your closest manager: Going through vision and values, expectations, the Trickle process, sales process, contract, internal goals, education, health, pension.

Walk-through of the office: Alarm, hours, how to book meetings.

Intro meeting to Slack, Check, Float and other tools.

Your closest manager is in charge of booking these sessions with you within your first two weeks at the company. Go get your onboarding on!
Finally, being “the new one” at company can be both loads of fun, as well as a bit chaotic and nervous. This onboarding is all about getting to know one another, going through what everyone’s working on and simply growing together as a team.

Every new employee will be taken out to a joint team lunch in the first days, as well as be invited to participate in an after work, dinner or other form of “non work related” social gathering within the first month. This is not mandatory by any means, but if you want and have the ability to attend – we’d love to make this happen! Your closest manager is in charge of grinding out the details for these.

Collective agreement

We choose to firmly decline unsure work situations. Trickle are connected to a collective agreement, through Unionen and the agreement “Medieföretagen – f.d. MIA HTF”. What it means in short is regulations surrounding employment types, salary, vacation days, overtime compensation and pension.

If you want to know about our collective agreement, you can read about it here.

All of our employees receive occupational pension through Unionen. Read more about it here.

No collective agreement

Even though we don’t have a collective agreement at this time, we make sure to follow Norwegian legislation and regulations regarding employment types, salary, vacation days, overtime compensation and pension.

No collective agreement

We are a responsible employer. We follow Finnish legislations and regulations when it comes to employement types, salary, vacation days, overtime compensation and pension.

Our employee pension insurance is via Varma – Finland’s most secure pension fund.

Pension

Occupational pension in Trickle AB (Sweden) is, in accordance with the collective agreement, called ITP 1. It’s an age-defined pension for employees born 1979 or later (but employees must be over 25 years of age to become eligible for) and consists of:

4,5 % of your salary up to 46 438* SEK/month.

30 % of your salary for anything above 46 438* SEK/month.

**cash paid in gross salary, based on 7.5 inkomstbasbelopp.*

As an addition to the occupational pension, we also have what’s called Flexpension, meaning that other than the 4,5 % that is put away for your recreational older days, Trickle also pays an extra premium of 1 % of the monthly salary.

Both the ITP and Flexpension premiums will be placed in each Trickle employee’s pension account according to the choices the individual has made regarding placements. Ask your closest manager if you want to know more about how you can place said pension or read more about Flexpension here!

Pension

In Oslo the occupational pension is as follows:

3 % of your salary up to 700 000 NOK* yearly.

8 % of your salary for anything above 700 000 NOK* yearly.

**cash paid in gross salary.*

Pension

The amount of pension payment is defined by legislation and it is paid for from your net salary. Your pension is paid to the company’s pension insurance company, which is Varma. In 2023 the general pension paymnt is 24,84% of net salary. Employees under 53 years of age and those who have turned 63 pay 7,15% of the full pension payment and employees between 53–62 years of age pay 8,65% of the full pension payment, while Trickle as the employer pays the rest of the full payment.

Vacation days

As a Swedish Trickle employee you have 25 vacay days to your disposal, which you either earn from April to April the next year or take out in advance. Either way, go get your rest on.

Vacation days

As a Norwegian Trickle employee you have 25 vacay days to your disposal, which you either earn from January to January the next year or take out in advance. Either way, go get your rest on.

Your employment accumulates vacation days if you work at least 14 days or 35 hours a month. Vacation days are always calculated from the period of 1.4.–31.3. When your employment has lasted less than a year, you accumulate 2 vacation days per each calendar month you work for a minimum of 14 days or 35 hours. When your employment has lasted for more than a year you accumulate 2,5 vacation days per each month.

Flex and overtime

We employ flex time at Trickle. Meaning, you can dispose your 40 hours over the week as you like (in collaboration with your team and manager, of course).

If you need to do overtime however, this needs to be cleared and approved by your manager. During weekdays you get 1,5 hours back for every 1 overtime hour you put in. On weekends 1 hour overtime equals 2 hours back.

You log and withdraw your overtime/flex in Check. For the sake of all parties involved, always clear overtime with your closest manager.

Flex and overtime

We employ flex time at Trickle. Meaning, you can dispose your 37.5 hours over the week as you like (in collaboration with your team and manager, of course). If you spend 1 hour more one day, you can take it out the next – and so on.

Flex and overtime

We employ flex time at Trickle. Meaning, you can dispose your 40 hours over the week as you like (in collaboration with your team and manager, of course).

If you need to do overtime however, this needs to be cleared and approved by your manager. During weekdays you get 1,5 hours back for every 1 overtime hour you put in. On weekends 1 hour overtime equals 2 hours back.

For the sake of all parties involved, always clear overtime with your closest manager.

How and when do we actually work?

We each got our own structure to adhere to. Alas, with no parameters in place, chaos would ensue. Please be as mindful as you can of the below.

Time management and keeping track of projects can be somewhat overwhelming at times, and that’s why we have Float and Check in place to help make it a little bit easier. We use Float to get an overview of each employee’s expected amount of time on projects and to delegate areas of responsibilities between team members within projects.

In every project we take on, we aim to always have at least 2 people working. Within these teams we make sure that:

Expectations of who does what and when are settled and agreed upon.

Regular check-ups are being held (such as starting up a project, mid-project reflection and a project summary).
We get that not everyone’s an early bird rising to catch the firm. Some people just don’t love the Dolly Parton cliché of 9 to 5– and that’s perfectly cool with us! Our lives are very different. That’s why, between 8:00 am & 8:00 pm you’re free to manage your work time in the way that suits you best..You want to clock some additional hours on Monday to get a jump start on the weekend? Be our guest. You’re a parent needing to start even earlier than 8 every day? That’s fine too.

Of course, this freedom comes with some responsibility, but as long as deadlines, meetings and other day to day things are managed, you’re free to plan your days as you wish. Just make sure your colleagues have some sense of your schedule, in case something should come up.

Finally, in the event of needing to work overtime: see “Overtime” in this here handbook regarding flex, overtime pay and hours.
All of our internal meetings need a clear agenda in place. If you’re having an internal meeting in reference to a project or a client, please make sure the agenda is shared with all relevant people so that your colleagues have a chance to prep or opt out if need be. Looking for inspiration on a perfect meeting? Check out our Notion on it.

The internal team meetings, which have a three-part structure, play a key role in driving our company forward and allow each employee to get a sense of what’s actually happening on both a micro and a macro level. Hence, these meetings should be attended by everyone. The structure for the internal team meetings is as follows:

Weekly: Depending on offices and teams, there’s a set date for your weekly team meeting. The weekly meetings main focus is to go through what’s in the pipeline, what everyone’s got going, sharing insights, new ideas and do internal presentations / educations.

Monthly: Once a month, we have a company-wide meeting which skews more business oriented. This is to go through how Trickle is doing. Topics may include things like existing and new clients, the $$$ situation, internal priorities and team news.

(Oh, and yeah, at least once a year we do a full team conference!)

The art of communication

We have a few key guidelines to keep the communication running as smooth as possible, both internally and externally, and keeping relevant people up to speed on the ins and the outs of projects and things going on.

Email

is primarily used for external communication with business partners and clients. In an attempt to keep our inboxes nice and tidy, we try to keep internal emails to a minimum.

Slack is what we use to share and communicate internally. Some Slack guidelines:

Local channels (#stockholm, #oslo et cetera) are basically used on a day-to-day basis to keep everyone up to speed. Share insights and ask for help in other channels!

For all project or client related matters, use the channels for that specific project/client. This is to make sure all important information is kept in a place easily accessed by the rest of the team, and also to avoid spam.

For random chatting and fun times use #random.

For questions, discussions and foods for thought, we have a designated channel for each area of Trickle’s expertise: #distribution, #search, #performance.

For updates within marketing or technical areas, or industry related news you want to share, please use #updates. For sharing findings or insights, well– #insights is your best source.

There are other designated channels as well, such as #help, #quotes (drop all quotes here) and #sales (confirm all sales here), which are to be used accordingly. Also: #glory. We love #glory.

In case of sickness/taking care of a sick child (VAB) – let your team know by changing your slack icon. Also, alert your team manager on what you need help with in your absence.

Also change your icon if you’re working remotely.

When replying to someone in shared Slack channel, please use the thread function feature. This keeps our channels nice and tidy.

In your profile, add a picture (it’s nicer that way), your telephone number and what your areas of expertise / responsibilities are. Like this, for example. That way, people can holler when they need to.

Calendars

are synchronized with your email account(s). Please make sure your work calendar is shared with the rest of the team, and keep it updated if you for example know that you’re going to work from home or have a glorious vacay planned.

The phone is used for pressing and urgent matters, just call or text the person you need to get a hold of. Telephone numbers to each team member can be found in their respective Slack profile or on the Trickle website.
We always try, to the best possible extent, to keep a direct contact with the client and minimize middle hands. This is partially to avoid any possible misunderstandings and also to eliminate the stress of having to rely on other people to get hold of the information needed.

When speaking to or emailing with a client, it’s always key to keep in mind that the role we have is one of expertise, therefore we should always display confidence and know-how. If you’re unsure of how to best answer a question, or struggle with finding the right way to put your thoughts into a sentence, ask someone for input and utilize the power of our collected wisdom. And also, and hopefully this goes without saying, we never lie to our partners and clients. Transparency is the melody of Trickle, and we expect every employee to uphold that.

Local policies

Working from home policy: Free to dispose as you please at the moment.

Meeting-free Wednesdays: Every Wednesday, all Stockholm employees are urged to not have any meetings to ensure efficiency and creativity aren’t lost in a sea of calls and meetings. Of course, this needs to be flexible sometimes, but generally speaking we try to the middle of our work week as open as possible.

Local policies

Working from home policy: We apply a 3-2 policy in Gothenberg, as in three days per week at the office, and – if you wish – two days at home. You are more than welcome to be at the office every day, of course. In our Gothenburg office, you will have your own desk and setup.

Meeting-free Wednesdays: Every Wednesday, all Gothenburg employees are urged to not have any meetings to ensure efficiency and creativity aren’t lost in a sea of calls and meetings. Of course, this needs to be flexible sometimes, but generally speaking we try to the middle of our work week as open as possible.

Local policies

Working from home policy: Free to dispose as you please at the moment.

Meeting-free Wednesdays: Every Wednesday, all Stockholm employees are urged to not have any meetings to ensure efficiency and creativity aren’t lost in a sea of calls and meetings. Of course, this needs to be flexible sometimes, but generally speaking we try to the middle of our work week as open as possible.

Local policies

Working from home policy: Free to dispose as you please at the moment

Local policies

Working from home policy: Free to dispose as you please at the moment.

Meeting-free Wednesdays: Every Wednesday, all Stockholm employees are urged to not have any meetings to ensure efficiency and creativity aren’t lost in a sea of calls and meetings. Of course, this needs to be flexible sometimes, but generally speaking we try to the middle of our work week as open as possible.

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Work and other
important stuff